In conclusion, results of the four-city case study of bus access confirm findings from prior research on urban service delivery that both professional norms and underclass bias are present in service delivery decisions. As well, government form may impact the extent to which public bureaucracies are subject to external pressure from the political arena. In Charlotte and Asheville, with the exception of lower-income neighborhoods, transit-dependent
neighborhoods do receive better bus access, which is likely due to a professional bureaucracy. In Richmond and Mobile, transit-dependent neighborhoods defined by ethnicity and income receive worse access than other neighborhoods, which may be a function of politicized decision-making in Richmond but which is not related to city government structure in Mobile.
Opportunities for Future Research
One opportunity for further research raised in this study is
operationalization of the dependent variable. As discussed in the design section, bus access is a multi-faceted variable. The LITA encompasses three key
components of access – frequency, capacity, coverage – but does not include other aspects that may be important to bus riders. These other aspects include safety, cleanliness, timeliness, availability of shelters and benches at bus stops, number of transfers required to reach a destination, and topographical as well as
!
!
)"#! physical barriers to bus stop access. In fact casual discussions with individual bus riders in various cities lead me to believe that these other factors often
determine whether or not someone will choose to ride the city bus. However, the ability to collect data on these other factors in a timely manner is challenging. Many transit agencies collect data on safety violations and timeliness but not in a standardized format. Likewise many agencies have information on the location of shelters and benches yet compiling this information in each census tract would be time consuming. Calculating the number of transfers from certain origins to certain destinations would be time consuming as would noting all the
topographical and physical barriers to bus stops. Yet all of these endeavors would be worthwhile for further research. In addition, bus rider surveys would be a valid way to triangulate which aspects of bus service are the most valued by riders.
A second opportunity for further investigation is the level of resolution in the unit of analysis. Census tract is a logical unit for the reasons discussed in the methodology section; however, certain census tracts may encompass several miles of land area that may result in overestimation of bus access for a particular tract. For example, a census tract may have multiple bus routes and stops but if they are all located in one section of the tract that is not walking distance from all parts of the tract, the LITA score for that tract may be skewed. Census blocks, block groups, or traffic analysis zones, which encompass smaller geographic areas than census tracts, may be more suitable units of analysis. Yet data availability for these smaller units is problematic. Devising a procedure to
! )"$! overlay data from the tract level onto smaller geographic units may be a
promising approach for using a different unit of analysis.
Data availability raises a third area for future research. In this study there is a nine-year mismatch between the dependent and independent variables because the independent variables are from Census 2000 whereas the LITA is calculated with data from 2009. The only exception is Charlotte, where the LITA was calculated from 2006 data so as to pre-date introduction of light rail in the City. Bus stop and route date from 2000 were not available in each city;
therefore, the second best option was to use the data that were available. The American Community Survey of the Census Bureau provides updates to Census 2000 data in between the decennial census years, but these data are not
available at the census tract level. Re-doing the study when results of the 2010 Census become available and concurrent with new stop and route data would be ideal to capture any changes in neighborhood composition that occur between decennial census data.
Finally, expanding the research to include an examination of the
relationship between local funding for transit and the level of access on an intra- city basis would add to the understanding of comparative levels of access. For example, some municipalities such as Charlotte, NC have implemented an incremental sales tax dedicated to transit funding whereas other cities may be more dependent on federal funding. Analysis of local funding arrangements, which may be an indication of transit preference by local residents, might impact
!
!
)"%! whether the city has resources to fund adequate mobility in transit-dependent neighborhoods.
Design Issues
A limitation with the research design is the case study approach. As discussed above, a random sample of neighborhoods would be a preferable method of comparing service delivery. The results of city studies are not directly generalizable to comparable cities. The results are what Yin (2003) calls
“analytic” rather than statistical generalization. In fact all studies on urban service delivery suffer from this limitation. Yet from a public policy perspective, results that confirm or disprove the hypothesis on bus service may be interesting to transit agencies in general and may prompt further research into specific cities and bus systems.
Further, the research design is limited in that it does not consider bus systems that are owned by special purpose governments or public authorities. This design approach is due to theoretical reasons. Because the body of literature on urban service delivery does not consider the impact of public
authorities, it is important to research bus service from a similar perspective. Yet unlike police and fire protection and parks and libraries, public transportation is a public good that is often provided by public authorities. Further research should develop a theory and empirically test urban service delivery on a neighborhood basis from a public authority perspective and compare these results with the results for city bus systems.
!"#$ $
!"#$ $
! "#$! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Figure 4
! ! "#$! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Figure 5
! "#$! !
!
Figure 6
! ! "#"! ! ! Figure 7
! "#$! ! ! ! %&'!()*+&,,!-./0! %1'!2+*34*567!89:;95*5<! ! ! %6'!89)*+&=*!89:;95*5<! %>'!8&;&6?<7!89:;95*5<! ! ! !
!
!
"##! REFERENCES!
Alwin, D.F., & Hauser, R. M.(1975). The Decomposition of Effects in Path Analysis. American Sociological Review, 40 (1), 37-47.
American Public Transportation Association (2007). A Profile of Public
Transportation Passenger Demographics and Travel Characteristics Reported in On-Board Surveys. Washington, D.C.: American Public
Transportation Association.
American Public Transportation Association (2008a). 2008 Public Transportation
Factbook (59th ed.), Washington, D.C.: American Public Transportation
Association.
American Public Transportation Association (2008b). Public Transportation:
Benefits for the 21st Century. Retrieved 28 August 2008, from
http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/twenty_first_century.cfm. American Public Transportation Association (2009). Transit News (March 9). Antunes, G. E., & Plumlee, J. P. (1977). The Distribution of an Urban Public
Service. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 12(3), 313-331.
Baer, W. C. (1985). Just What is an Urban Service Anyway? The Journal of
Politics, 47(3), 881-898.
Benn, H. (1995). Synthesis of Transit Practice 10: Bus Route Evaluation
Standards. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Berry, J., Portney, K. E., & Thomson, K. (1993). The rebirth of urban democracy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Berube, A. (2006a). Gaining but Losing Ground. In Berube, A., Katz, B., & Lang, R. E. (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban America: Evidence from
Census 2000. Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press.
Berube, A. (2006b). Racial and Ethnic Change in the Nation's Largest Cities. In Berube, A., Katz, B., & Lang, R. E. (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban
America: Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.
Bhat, C. R., Guo, J. Y., Sen, S., & Weston, L. (2005). Measuring Access to
Public Transportation Services: Review of Customer-Oriented Transit Performance Measures and Methods of Transit Submarket Identification.
! "#$! Bolotin, F. N., & Cingranelli, D. L. (1983). Equity and Urban Policy: The
Underclass Hypothesis Revisited. The Journal of Politics, 45, 210-219. Boyle, J., & Jacobs, D. (1982). The Intracity Distribution of Services: A
Multivariate Analysis. The American Political Science Review, 76, 371- 379.
Boyne, G., & Powell, M. (1991). Territorial Justice A review of theory and evidence. Political Geography Quarterly, 10(3), 263-281.
Brehm, J., & Gates, S. (1999). Working, shirking, and sabotage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Burnett, A.D. (1981). In Burnett, A. D., & Taylor, P. J. (Eds.), Political studies
from spatial perspectives. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Cingranelli, D. L. (1981). Race, Politics, and Elites: Testing Alternative Models of Municipal Service Distribution. American Journal of Political Science, 25(4, November), 664-692.
Coulter, P. B. (1980). Measuring the Inequity of Urban Public Services: A
Methodological Discussion with Applications. Policy Studies Journal, 683- 697.
Crompton, J.L, & Lamb, C.W. Jr. (1983). The Importance of the Equity Concept in the Allocation of Public Services. Journal of Macromarketing. 3(28), 28- 39.
Currie, G., Enright, D., Hoey, C., & Paterson, D. (2003). Quantitative Approaches
to Needs Based Assessment of Public Transport Services - The Hobart Transport Needs Gap Study. Paper presented at the 26th Australian
Transport Research Forum.
Dalvi, M. Q., & Martin, K. M. (1976). The Measurement of Accessibility: Some Preliminary Results. Transportation, 5, 17-42.
Dodson, J., Gleeson, B., Evans, R., & Sipe, N. (2006). Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage - I. Towards New Concepts and Methods. Urban Policy and Research, 24(4), 433-453.
Dodson, J. Gleeson, B., Evans, R., & Sipe, N. (2007). Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage II: From Concepts to Methods through an Empirical Case Study. Urban Policy and Research, 25(1), 63- 89.
!
!
"#$! Downs, A. (1994). Links Between Central Cites and Suburbs. In Downs, A. (Ed.),
New visions for metropolitan America. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.
Dreir, P., Mollenkopf, J., & Swanstrom, T. (2001). Place Matters: Metropolitics for
the Twenty-First Century: University of Kansas Press.
Environmental Defense Fund (2008). Fighting for Equality in Public Transit:
Labor Community Strategy Center v. MTA. Retrieved 27 August 2008,
from http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=2826.
Federal Highway Administration (2002). Status of the Nation's Highways,
Bridges, and Transit: 2002 Conditions and Performance Report. Retrieved
15 July 2009, from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2002cpr/ch1.htm. Fincher, Ruth (2002). New Geographies of Disadvantage: Implications for
Service Delivery. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 58(3), 55 - 60.
Foster, K. A. (1997). The political economy of special-purpose government:
American governance and public policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution.
Frederickson, H. G., Johnson, G. A., & Wood, C. H. (2004). The adapted city:
Institutional dynamics and structural change. Armonk, New York: M.E.
Sharpe.
Frederickson, H. G., Wood, C. H., & Logan, B. (2001). How American City Governments Have Changed: The Evolution of the Model City Charter.
National Civic Review, 90(1), 3-18.
Garrett, M., & Taylor, B. (1999). Reconsidering Social Equity in Public Transit.
Berkeley Planning Journal, 13, 6-27.
Granovetter, M. & Swedberg, R. (1993). The sociology of economic life. Boulder: Westview Press.
Giuliano, G. (2005). Low Income, Public Transit, and Mobility. Transportation
Research Record; Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1927,
63-70.
Glaeser, E. L., & Vigdor, J. L. (2006). Racial Segregation. In Berube, A., Katz, B., & Lang, R. E. (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban America: Evidence
! "#$! Greene, K. R. (1982). Municipal Administrator's Receptivity to Citizens' and
Elected Officials' Contacts. Public Administration Review, 42(4), 346-353. Grengs, J. (2001). Does Public Transit Counteract the Segregation of Carless
Households? Transportation Research Record, 1753, 3-10. Grengs, J. (2004). Abandoning the Social Goals of Public Transit in the
Neoliberal City. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Paper No. URRC 04-
06.
Handy, S. L., & Niemeier, D. A. (1997). Measure Accessibility: An Exploration of Issues and Alternatives. Environment and Planning A, 29, 1175-1194. Harvey, D. (1973) Social justice and the city. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Hay, A.M. (1995). Concepts of Equity, Fairness and Justice in Geographical Studies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series,
20(4), 500-508.
Hodgart, R.L. (1978). Optimizing Access to Public Services: A review of
problems, models, and methods of locating central facilities. Progress in
Human Geography, 2(1), 17-48.
International City/County Management Association (2008). The municipal
yearbook 2008. Washington, D.C.: ICMA.
Iseki, H., & Taylor, B.D. (2001). The Demographics of Public Transit Subsidies: A
Case Study of Los Angeles. Presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Washington, D.C., 2002.
Jones, B. D. (1981). Party and Bureaucracy: The Influence of Intermediary Groups on Urban Public Service Delivery. The American Political Science
Review, 75(3), 688-700.
Jones, B. D. (1984). Political Decision-making and the Distribution of Public Benefits: A Political Science Perspective. In Kirby, A., Knox, P., & Pinch, S. (Eds.), Public service provision and urban development. London: Croom Helm.
Jones, B. D., & Kaufman, C. (1974). The Distribution of Urban Public Services.
Administration & Society, 6(3, November), 337-360.
Jones, B. D., Greenberg, S. R., Kaufman, C., & Drew, J. (1978). Service Delivery Rules and the Distribution of Local Government Services: Three Detroit Bureaucracie s. The Journal of Politics, 40(2), 332-368.
!
!
"#$! Jones, K., & Kirby, A. (1981). Provision and Wellbeing: An Agenda for Public
Resources Research. Environment and Planning A, 14, 297-310.
Kettl, D. F. (1983). Public Administration: The State of the Field. In Finifter, A. W. (Ed.), Political science: the state of the discipline. Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association.
Kittelson & Associates, Inc., KFH Group, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglass, Inc., & Hunter-Zaworski, K. (2003a). Transit capacity and
quality of service manual. Washington, DC: Transportation Research
Board.
Kittelson & Associates, Inc., Urbitran, Inc., LKC Consulting Services, Inc., MORPACE International, Inc., Queensland University of Technology, & Nakanishi, Y. (2003). A guidebook for developing a transit performance-
measurement system. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board.
Kirby, A. (1982). The politics of location. London: Methuen.
Kirk, J., & Miller, M. L. (1986). Reliability and validity in qualitative research. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Klem, L. (1995). Path Analysis. In Grimm, L. & Arnold, P. (Eds.), Reading and
understanding multivariate statistics. Washington, D.C.: American
Psychological Association.
Koehler, D. H., & Wrightston, M. T. (1987). Inequality in the Delivery of Urban Services: A Reconsideration of the Chicago Parks. The Journal of Politics,
49(1), 80-99.
Koelble, T. A. (1995). Review: The New Institutionalism in Political Science and Sociology. Comparative Politics, 27(2), 231-243.
Lasswell, H.D. (1958). Politics: who gets what, when, how. New York: World Publishing Company.
Levy, F., Meltsner, A. J., & Wildavsky, A. (1974). Urban outcomes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Li, J., & Wachs, M. (2004). The Effects of Transit Subsidy Policy on Investment Decisions: The Case of San Francisco's Geary Corridor. Transportation,
! "#$! Lineberry, R.L. (1975). Equality, Public Policy and Public Services: The
Underclass Hypothesis and the Limits to Equality. Politics and Policy 4, 67-84.
Lineberry, R. L. (1977). Equality and urban policy: The distribution of municipal
public services (Vol. 39). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Lineberry, R. L., & Welch, R. E. J. (1974). Who Gets What: Measuring the Distribution of Urban Public Services. Social Science Quarterly, 54(4), 700-712.
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public
services. New York: Basic Books.
Logan, J. R. (2006). Ethnic Diversity Grows, Neighborhood Integration Lags. In Berube, A., Katz, B., & Lang, R. E. (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban
America: Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.
Loukaitou-Sideris, A., & Stieglitz, O. (2002). Children in Los Angeles Parks. Town
Planning Review, 73(4), 467-488.
MacManus, S. (1999). The Resurgent City Councils. In Weber, R. E., & Brace, P. (Eds.), American state and local politics. New York: Seven Bridges Press, LLC.
March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1984). The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political LIfe. The American Political Science Review, 78(3), 734-749.
Martin, D.G. (2003). "Place-Framing" as Place-Making: Constituting a
Neighborhood for Organizing and Activism. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 93(3), 730-750.
Martinelli, D., & Medellin, L. (2007). Assessment of Bus Transit Equity in Two
Metropolitan Areas. Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University.
Report No. WVU-2006-01.
Maynard-Moody, S., & Musheno, M. (2003). Cops, teachers, counselors: Stories
from the front lines of public service. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
McCrary, P., Gray, J. A., Still, E., & Perry, H. L. (1994). Alabama. In Davidson, C., & Grofman, B. (Eds.), Quiet revolution in the South: The impact of the
Voting Rights Act 1965 - 1990. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
!
!
"#$! Mesch, G. S., & Schwirian, K. P. (1996). The Effectiveness of Neighborhood
Collective Action. Social Problems, 43(4), 467-483.
Miranda, R. A., & Tunyavong, I. (1994). Patterned Inequality? Reexamining the Role of Distributive Politics in Urban Service Delivery. Urban Affairs
Quarterly, 29(4), 509-534.
Mitchell, J. (1990). The Policy Activites of Public Authorities. Policy Studies
Journal, 18(4), 928-942.
Mladenka, K. R. (1978). Organizational Rules, Service Equality and Distributional Decisions in Urban Politics. Social Science Quarterly, 59(1), 192-201. Mladenka, K. R. (1980). The Urban Bureaucracy and the Chicago Political
Machine: Who Gets What and the Limits to Political Control. The
American Political Science Review, 74(4), 991-998.
Mladenka, K. R. (1989). The Distribution of an Urban Public Service: The Changing Role of Race and Politics. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 24(4), 556- 583.
Mladenka, K. R., & Hill, K. Q. (1977). The Distribution of Benefits in an Urban Environment Parks and Libraries in Houston. Urban Affairs Quarterly,
13(1), 73-94.
Mladenka, K. R., & Hill, K. Q. (1978). The Distribution of Urban Police Services.
The Journal of Politics, 40(1), 112-133.
Moe, T. M. (1984). The New Economics of Organization. American Journal of
Political Science, 28(4), 739-777.
Moe, T. M. (1991). Politics and the Theory of Organization. Journal of Law,
Economics & Organization, 7(Special Issue: Papers from the Conference
on the New Science of Organization), 106-129.
Moeser, J. V., & Silver, C. (1994). Race, Social Stratification, and Politics: The Case of Atlanta, Memphis, and Richmond. The Virginia Magazine of
History and Biography, 102(4), 519 - 550.
Morris, J. M., Dumble, P. L., & Wigan, M. R. (1978). Accessibility Indicators for Transport Planning. Transportation Research A, 13A, 91-109.
Murray, A.T., (2001). Strategic Analysis of Public Transport Coverage. Socio-
! "#$! Murray, A. T., Davis, R., Stimson, R. J., & Ferreira, L. (1998). Public
Transportation Access. Transportation Research D 3(5), 319-328.
North, D. C. (1990) Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nyerges, T. L. (1995). Geographical Information System Support for Urban/Regional Transportation Analysis. In Hansen, S. (Ed.), The
geography of urban transportation. New York: The Guilford Press.
Pacione, M. (2001) Urban geography: A global perspective. London: Routledge. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. 3rd ed.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Perry, J. L., & Babitsky, T. T. (1986). Comparative Performance in Urban Bus Transit: Assessing Privatization Strategies. Public Administration Review,
46(1), 57-66.
Polzin, S. E., & Maggio, E. (2007). Public Transit in America: Analysis of Access
Using the 2001 National Household Travel Survey. Tampa: Center for
Urban Transportation Research, Report No. NCTR 576-02, FDOT BD- 549-30.
Pucher, J. (1982). Discrimination in Mass Transit. Journal of the American
Planning Association, 48(3), 315-326.
Pucher, J., Evans, T., & Wegner, J. (1998). Socioeconomics of Urban Travel: Evidence from the 1995 NPTS. Transportation Quarterly, 52(3), 15-33. Rich, R.C. (1979). Neglected Issues in the Study of Urban Service Distributions:
a Research Agenda. Urban Studies 16, 143-156.
Rood, T. (1998). The Local Index of Transit Availability: An Implementation
Manual. Sacramento.
Salon, D. (2006). Cars and the City? A Model of the Determinants of Auto
Ownership and Use for Commuting in New York City with Endogenous Choice of Residential Location. Paper presented at the Transportation
Research Board 85th Annual Meeting, Albany, New York.
Sanchez, T. W., Upton, A., Jones, P., & Lucas, K. (2007). Integrating Urban
Service Delivery Research for Distributional Analyses and Transport Equity. Paper presented at the Transportation Research Board 86th
!
!
"#"! Savas, E.S. (1978). On Equity in Providing Public Services. Management
Science, 24(8), 800-808.
Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative behavior. New York: Macmillan.
Sohmer, R. R., & Lang, R. E. (2006). Downtown Rebound. In Berube, A., Katz, B., & Lang, R. E. (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban America:
Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press.
Stone, C. N. (1980). Systematic Power in Community Decision Making: A Restatement of Stratification Theory. The American Political Science
Review, 74(4), 978-990.
Svara, J. H. (1998). The Politics-Administration Dichotomy Model as Aberration.
Public Administration Review, 58(1), 51-58.
Svara, J. H. (1999). The Embattled Mayors and Local Executives. In Weber, R. E., & Brace, P. (Eds.), American state and local politics: Directions for the
21st Century. New York: Seven Bridges Press, LLC.
Svara, J. H. (2001a). Do We Still Need Model Charters? The Meaning and Relevance of Reform in the Twenty-First Century. National Civic Review,
90(1), 19-33.
Svara, J. H. (2001b). The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration. Public
Administration Review, 61(2), 176-183.
Talen, E. (1997). The Social Equity of Urban Service Distribution: An Exploration of Park Access in Pueblo, Colorado, and Macon, Georgia. Urban
Geography, 18(6), 521-541.
Talen, E., & Anselin, L. (1998). Assessing Spatial Equity: An Evaluation of Measures of Accessibility to Public Playgrounds. Environment and
Planning A, 30, 595-613.
Teitz, M. B. (1968). Toward a Theory of Urban Public Facility Location. Papers in
Regional Science, 21(1), 35 - 51.
Thill, J.-C. (2000). Geographic Information Systems for Transportation in Perspective. In Thill, J.-C. (Ed.), Geographic information systems in
transportation research. New York: Elsevier.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2008). Geographic Areas Reference Manual. Retrieved 28 August 2008, from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/garm.html.
! "#$! Wachs, M., & Taylor, B. D. (1998). Can Transportation Strategies Help Meet the
Welfare Challenge? Journal of the American Planning Association, 64(1), 15-20.
Wu, B. M.,& Hine, J. P. (2003). A PTAL Approach to Measuring Changes in Bus Service Accessibility. Transport Policy, 10, 307-320.
Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research design and methods (Vol. 5). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
!
!
"#$! APPENDIX A: QUESTIONS FOR BUS PLANNERS AND ELECTED OFFICIALS
AND CONFIDENTIALITY FORM
Questions for professional bus route planners:
1) Will you describe the process used for determining bus routes and stops in the [City of Asheville]?
2) What factors are taken into account when determining new routes or